From my experience, most FOSS software is very user friendly user-centric / user-focused, while proprietary stuff is shit. What is the most notable exception to this rule that comes to your mind?

Edit: With user friendliness, I don’t mean UI design, but things like how the software is handling user privacy, whether it sees its users as users or as money-making cattle, how it handles user feedback, compatibility with other software the user uses (vs. vendor lock-in), configurability, and similar issues.

Edit2: I was made aware that user friendliness is a defined term: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Userfriendliness

  • wolfEnglish
    9·
    21 hours ago

    I am an IT guy, so my needs, preferences and priorities are not the norm.

    IMHO software is mostly a shit-show, doesn’t matter if property or FOSS. My most loved target of critique is macOS/Apple, because the user experience is so bad for me. (Forced by my work to use it, so I have several years of experience/suffering with it.)

    I think it is more about finding software which works by accident (or your training/prior knowledge), as you expect it should work. The biggest problem with proprietary software is that they usually need to up sell, dump down features (hello, macOS window management, finder and everything else) or want to force you into their walled garden.

    One easy example where FOSS kicks ass compared to proprietary is managing/installing and updating software: Linux and the BSDs have all sane centrally managed systems for native packages and Flatpaks/Snaps, compare that to the shit-show on Windows and macOS devices. Don’t let me start on provisioning and other topics, where FOSS is by now decades ahead of the stuff one sees in macOS/windows.

    One proprietary system which works awesome is Steam and SteamDeck. No questions there and I’ll happily throw my money at Valve.

    I had the pleasure of working with great UX designers, but you are sorry out of luck if you are not the persona they target and their decisions are guided by making money and making their manager happy, so a good user experience is at most their 3rd concern, if you are lucky.

    Concerning documentation I fully agree with you, with very few exceptions (Arch WIKI, FreeBSD handbook, RHELs documentation), the FOSS world is a sad place.

    In the end, there is the potential for great UX in both proprietary and FOSS systems, but when you want to focus on user centric, FOSS wins IMHO for IT guys because they are the only systems which are literally build by their users.